Did You Know...

Ok, it’s back to the beastly bailout business at hand and there is no time to waste. Crap Sandwich 2.0 is coming back to the House — and the MSM is heralding flip-floppers who are being bought off with Lord knows what.

Will 2008 be the year of the Chicken Little Congress? Or can the House of Representatives show the panic-driven Senate what it really means to be a deliberative body?

On Sept. 19, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson put a gun to America’s head: Pass his $700 billion bailout of the banking industry and give him unfettered new powers to buy up an ocean of privately-held toxic assets or all hell would break loose. Treasury officials warned that the market would lose a third of its value if not passed immediately.

On Sept. 29, the House refused to bite. The Dow dropped nearly 7 percent – a “record fall” in points (778), but nowhere near the apocalyptic levels predicted by Paulson’s fear-mongers. Half that drop occurred before the bailout rejection. The skies, however gray, did not fall. The world did not end. The dire predictions of Paulson and company did not come to pass. The next day, stocks (their barometer, mind you, not necessarily mine) rebounded. We’re about where we were in 2006. Stock market Armageddon? I think not.

This is a man, in other words, whose crap sandwich should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

On Oct. 1, at the behest of Paulson, the Senate scurried to put Mother of All Bailouts 2.0 on the table. All but 25 members swallowed. The “world’s greatest deliberative body” had no time to hold hearings, consider alternatives, or study the history of similar failed bailouts around the world. The Do Something Now Or Else mob did, however, have time to quadruple the volume of pages and stuff the urgent, emergency package with business-as-usual earmarks, goodies, and sweeteners.

John McCain and Barack Obama both cited credit squeeze scare stories to rationalize the rush. McCain decried: “When small businesses and big businesses like Sonic [Drive-In burger] franchisees can’t borrow…It hurts the entire community.” The rest of the story? Sonic clarified “that during the past year GE Capital provided less than 10% of the lending to its franchisees…in fact, many franchisees maintain access to other diversified sources of financing. Furthermore, Sonic has not received any notification from GE Capital, either directly or indirectly, that it will stop financing new loans to Sonic franchisees.”

Instead, the New York Times obsessed about the drop in auto loan approvals over the last year – from 83 percent in 2007 down to 63 percent. Catastrophe? No. If lenders are finally realizing they shouldn’t give money to bad risks, why is that a bad thing?

Getting credit is not a constitutional right.

Preserving home ownership should not be a government imperative to be pursued at all costs.

The House faces a choice: Put the gun down and give our economic problems the time they deserve to get fixed – or fork over untold billions to a thoroughly debunked Foxy Loxy and his den of wolves.